THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Terry Wogan, Irish radio and TV broadcaster, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at BBC Broadcasting House.

In the first ‘hit’ of its kind, Eamonn interrupted Terry’s BBC Radio 2 morning show to surprise him live on air. The remainder of Terry’s show was then broadcast from the back seat of a car that drove him from Broadcasting House to the Thames studios on Euston Road, where his tribute was then recorded at 9.30 in the morning!

“I wish I’d shaved!”

Screenshots of Terry Wogan This Is Your Life

Terry recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography Is It Me? reproduced here with kind permission of the author...

Then one bright morning in 1978, Eamonn Andrews burst into my studio at nine o’clock with the Big Red Book, and I realised that Helen had been deceiving me for months, and I had never noticed a thing. Up to that moment, I had thought of myself as sensitive, aware of nuance and any deviation in the pattern of behaviour of my nearest and dearest. This Is Your Life helped me realise that I had all the sensitivity of a lavatory seat.

They dragged me out of the studio, and I continued to speak to my radio audience from the BBC Radio cab, as Eamonn, myself and blessed Derek Mills, who had connived at it all behind my back, drove to the TV studios on Euston Road.

They were all there, of course – friends from Ireland, Laurie Holloway, Marion Montgomery, Val Doonican, Frank and Peggy Spencer from Come Dancing, Pete Murray, Tony Blackburn, an audience full of the friends we had made in Britain, and, most importantly, Helen, with Alan, Mark and Katherine. Brian and his wife, Pauline were there, too, and with them, Rose and Michael.

It was a wonderful, emotional day; Eamonn and his team treated everybody with typical kindness and professionalism, and we all ended up with a late lunch at a trat in Charlotte Street.

I sometimes regret that I was done by This Is Your Life so early in my career in British radio and television. Compared with what was to come, I had done very little. On the other hand, I am grateful that it happened while Rose and Michael were still alive. They were bemused, but, I think, proud, and Michael T. got to sing ‘The Floral Dance’ along with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band.

Scriptwriter Roy Bottomley recalls the experience of this particular edition of This Is Your Life in his book This Is Your Life: The Story of Television's Famous Big Red Book...

Terry Wogan was still a DJ when Eamonn Andrews gatecrashed his BBC radio studio while he was broadcasting live on 19 April 1978. We had a radio car at the front door so he could continue broadcasting on the way to our studio. Said the blarney to the blarney: 'If I'd known about this I'd have shaved.'

Writer Gus Smith recalls this particular edition of This Is Your Life in his biography, Eamonn Andrews His Life...

After Terry Wogan was surprised in the late seventies, during his morning radio programme in Broadcasting House, he told himself he was not nearly as perceptive as he’d reckoned he was.

‘I mean my producer, my wife, relatives and friends - even my children - were all in on the plot and yet I never sensed a thing. It showed me that I was as sensitive as a toilet seat.’

To Terry, the only thing wrong with the show was that it was done five years too early. He hadn't presented Blankety Blank or the Wogan chat show; otherwise, he enjoyed the experience.

'I never considered it an intrusion. I now know that I reacted in startled fashion when confronted by Eamonn but I think that was understandable in the circumstances. I was glad in another way that it happened to me then, for my father was alive to enjoy it; that was an enormous advantage - he was thrilled.'